Authorities in China have decided that live-streaming audio and video content may not be such a good idea, and that three companies, including Twitter-like microblog Sina Weibo, were “not in line with national audiovisual regulations and propagating negative speech,” reports the Financial Times.
That announcement from China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) took US$1 billion off of Sina Weibo’s market capitalization in New York trading Thursday, where shares slid as much as 10.8%, to settle down 6.1%.
The microblog had reinvented itself with a new emphasis on live-streaming video, after losing ground in the social media war to rival WeChat, but will now have to rethink that strategy. The announcement from SAPPRFT did not specify whether the ban permanent.